


In Another Life

by dinolaur



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Character Death, F/M, Gen, in which mama stilinski is an argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinolaur/pseuds/dinolaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were things about her life that Mrs. Stilinski had no intentions of sharing with her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just for a fun what-if plot bunny. My headcanon for Mama Stilinski's name is Elikonida (which is Russian), but she goes by Ellie. I figure if she's named her son something ridiculously unpronounceable, she's probably got a weird name too. 
> 
> Sections of the story happening in the present will be written in present tense, flashbacks in past tense. I know, I know it's confusing. Try to keep up. ;)

Chris is surprised that it’s taken the sheriff this long to finally be brought into the loop about the whole supernatural world. Or, to be fair, it’s probably far less about the Stilinski boy’s ability to keep a secret or the sheriff’s observational skills and much, much more about the sheriff just really not wanting to actually admit to what all the evidence pointing. Chris has met the man on multiple occasions. He’s smart, but he seems like the sort of person who can ignore a lot—in his personal life more than professional—in hopes that a problem will just go away.

So Sheriff Stilinski finally knows about the werewolf pack in his town and that his son is in way over his head with them. Honestly, Chris thinks sometimes, Derek Hale is completely incompetent, making a teenaged human boy his second. But, then again, without Stiles Stilinski, the entire Hale Pack would probably be dead about ten times over. It’s the principle of the matter, Chris assumes. Stiles is young.

Of course, Chris was younger still when he first became actively involved in all of this mess.

Now that Stilinski knows about werewolves, he knows about hunters too, which means he’s been informed of Chris’s night job, and as head of law enforcement in Beacon County, as well as a concerned parent, he’s requested a meeting with Chris to hash all of this stuff out.

Chris is more than willing. After all, assuming Stilinski goes with the flow and accepts that the Hales and the Argents have formed up a treaty—shaky as it sometimes seems—and that means that his son is safe, it’ll be nice to not have to work completely around the police in the event of things getting ugly. An in is always beneficial.

The sheriff offers up his house as a meeting spot—home field advantage—and Chris brings along Allison. As part of the Hale Pack, she’s the official mediator between them and all hunters. Stiles will also be there, not only because it’s his home but because he is Hale’s second, the one that Hale trusts with the safety, wellbeing, and the interests of his pack more than anyone else. Looking at him, anyone would wonder what Hale was smoking, but Chris has seen Stiles when things go sour. It’s the definition of foolishness to cross the boy then.

They arrive at the Stilinski house in time for the dinner the sheriff has insisted they have first. Allison perks at the mention and assures her father that Stiles is made of pure magic in the kitchen. It’ll be good.

Stiles opens the door a few seconds after Allison pushes the bell. He steps aside to let them in, a curt “Mr. Argent” directed at Chris, and he and Allison exchange a touch that seems like it would be too intimate, but Chris has a mild understanding of how tactile werewolf packs are, even their human members.  Chris looks up to see Stilinski standing in the doorway between what looks like the sitting room and the hallway, a glass of whiskey in hand and a vaguely uncomfortable expression about his face. Chris understands. He’s had to get used to Allison doing all of that too.

He gives a brief shake of his head before holding out a hand to Chris and offering him a drink. Stiles has already dragged Allison off into the kitchen where they’re loudly chatting about God only knows what.

Dinner is indeed delicious. The boy definitely has culinary talent, a good match to the cake Allison brought over for afterwards. Stilinski complains when Allison listens to Stiles’s warnings and serves him a fairly small slice. “Sorry, Sheriff,” she laughs. “But Stiles is the boss.”

Stilinski glares at his son’s smug expression. “I diapered your butt and fed you at three in the morning. There is no way you get to be the boss here.”

“Yet, even waving your badge around won’t get you fries anywhere in town,” Stiles drawls. “My network is vast and solid. I’m winning.”

“You got a smart mouth on you, kid,” his father says, but it’s all fondness.

“Come by it honestly,” Stiles says, and they all dig into Allison’s cake.

Afterwards, it’s finally down to business. All in all, considering all the times that his family has put Stiles in some kind of danger or been threatening, it goes pretty well.

“So you’ve got this Code,” Stilinski says. “That you don’t hunt what hasn’t hurt you?”

“Pretty much,” Chris says. There are some complexities to it, but that’s basically it.

“But you’ve gone after Scott McCall in the past,” Stilinski accuses. “Even though he hadn’t hurt anyone. Because, what, he was—or is—dating Allison?”

Chris thinks for a moment that he could make a choice comment about the sheriff’s own son and Derek Hale, but he holds it back. That’s not his place. And he sees where Stilinski is coming from, saying that. He knows that Scott and Stiles have been friends since they were little, little kids, and, loath as he is to admit it sometimes, Chris knows that Scott is a good kid. There’s no way that his friendship with Stiles could have gone on for so long and the Sheriff—and Melissa McCall on the other side of the coin—could come away not caring about the other boy too.

“The circumstances were extreme,” Chris says carefully. “There was a rogue Alpha terrorizing the town. We knew Derek Hale was here, but we weren’t sure about the identity of the second Beta for a while. And with people dying like they were, well, sometimes you have to make the tough call.”

He glances at Allison, but she’s firmly avoiding his gaze. The position as matriarch is still hers, but she does her absolute best to not have any part of it outside of insisting on peace with the Hale Pack. After everything that happened, Chris can’t really blame her for that.

“Against an innocent sixteen year old boy,” Stilinski asks, tone slipping into something dangerous.

“Dad,” Stiles interjects. “Look, as much as it pains me to say this—no offense, Allison—as much as Mr. Argent can be a jerk about some things—“ His father offers him a mildly disapproving frown, probably mostly out of habit. “—but he does do his best to stick to the Code. He pointed a gun at his own sister when he realized what she was doing. And he went up against his dad and Allison at the end of the whole kanima thing.”

That’s about as close to a vote of confidence as Chris has ever gotten from Stiles, but he can’t really blame him what with all the interrogations and threatening his best friend stuff.

Stilinski slowly nods. “And all your permits, those are all legal, right,” he asks.

“Completely legitimate,” Chris answers.

“Well, that’s one less headache,” he mutters, and then turns to look at Stiles. “Kid,” he asks.

Stiles exchanges a silent but meaningful glance with Allison before turning that calculating gaze to Chris. It’s one that makes him wonder how the boy who flails around and can’t shut his smart mouth and this one can even be the same person. “The truce still stands,” Stiles says. “The Argents have been the cause of just about everything bad that’s happened to the Hales, but with Allison in the pack, we’ve got a truce. As long as the Argents keep up with their end of the bargain, we have no reason to retaliate.”

“Oh God,” Stilinski groans. “Retaliate?” The look he gives his son is sort of heartbreaking. Chris has been there before. It’s that moment when you realize that your child is not only an adult, but that your child is an adult who has and will continue to have to make life or death decisions. It’s a moment that you realize that your child has grown up too soon and too much.

Stiles doesn’t look away from Chris when he answers, and Chris recognizes the threat for what it is all over again. “No one wants a war, but we aren’t going to shy away from it if we’re crossed again.” It’s still a bit disappointing to see Allison standing there right at Stiles’s side. She’s pack. She’s in this with the wolves. It’s not easy, and she looks torn at just the idea, but she’s made her choice.

It’s the biggest reason Chris will fight with his everything to make sure this truce stands.

“Then I guess that means I have to trust you,” Stilinski says heavily after a moment.

It’s getting a bit late, and after everything has been settled, Chris makes their excuses. He exchanges handshakes again with both Stilinskis, and he turns for the hallway and stops short.

It’s really not something all that noticeable, just an 8x10-framed photograph over the fireplace. It’s of the Stilinski family, and there’s a woman who, other than her golden hair, is something of the spitting image of the child sitting in her lap. It shouldn’t be all that interesting, but Chris cannot tear his gaze off the photo.

“Dad,” Allison asks carefully.

Her voice breaks the trance, but instead of turning away and leaving, he just steps closer and reaches out to pick up the frame. Behind him, both Stiles and his father draw in sharp breaths. “Who—who is this,” Chris asks, hardly daring to do more than whisper.

It takes a long moment before Stilinski answers, “That was my wife.”

“Your wife,” Chris echoes. “She—um—she’s—“

Chris knows that the sheriff lost his wife some years ago. Town gossip has told him it was a cancer and not a pretty sight to behold when it finally happened and the father and son nearly fell apart. Chris has seen that the sheriff still wears his wedding ring, even after nearly five years.

“Dad,” Allison asks. “What’s going on?”

Chris has to clear his throat to force down the lump that’s all but choking him before he can speak. “Any—um—any chance her name was Ellie?”

The same sharp intakes of breath, and this time it’s Stile who asks, “How did you know that?”

“This woman,” Chris says, not looking away from the smiling face. “This woman was my sister.”

``

Christophe and Elikonida—please, please, please just call her Ellie—Argent were inseparable. Being twins, they felt that that was pretty much a given. Their mother said they were an interesting pair, different but very much the same. Chris was older—only by six minutes—and a bit quieter. Ellie, if you didn’t know how to stop her, could talk a mile a minute and was always in constant motion. Both were smart, very quick on the uptake, and adaptable. They had to be.

Because Chris and Ellie didn’t come from a normal family. No. Normal families didn’t keep weapons stock piled in the garage. Normal kids didn’t say Bloody Mary to a mirror at a slumber party and actually expect that the ghost might show up.

Chris and Ellie came from a family of hunters of the supernatural, specifically of werewolves. Their family had a long line of history fighting against the monsters, dating back to some ancestors in France, and over the generations had picked up a lot of information about various other creatures of the night. Their parents had made the decision to never really keep the knowledge from their children, and so after they turned six, the twins had been sat down and informed that there were things that went bump in the night.

It had been terrifying. Their dad had spared very few details, stopping only at the really heavy descriptions and even then being almost physically held back by their mom. Ellie had crawled into Chris’s bed every night for almost two weeks, neither of them feeling safe even just across the room from each other.

Eventually, the fear started to abate. Their dad was honest with them about when he was going out on hunts, and he came back triumphant every time. It got harder to be scared because it was like their dad was Superman. He was fighting monster and always winning. These things were supposed to be bigger, badder, and more dangerous, but their dad kicked them back every time.

So monsters existed. Big deal. If you were smart and watched your back—and they always had each other to do that—everything would always be fine.

``

“My mom—my mom was your sister,” Stiles says. “No. No way.”

He spins to look at his dad, whose expression is torn in that way it always is when his mom is brought up, but he also looks thoughtful. “Her maiden name was Argent,” he says slowly.

“No,” Stiles says again, more forcefully.

“She just—I never considered it,” Stilinski says. “She said she didn’t have any family. And Argent, ok, it’s not the most common name, but it’s not like only a hundred people in the world have that name.”

“No, this can’t be right,” Stiles cries. “Mom can’t have been a hunter. She can’t have been one of them.” Even as he spits it out, he’s reaching for Allison’s hand—an unspoken _I don’t mean you_ hanging in the air. Allison takes his hand in a sort of daze, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time ever.

“Elikonida,” Chris says. “She hated the name. Always said it was completely unfair that her name was something insane but that Kate and I had such normal ones.”

“Her birthday,” Stiles demands.

“April eighth,” Chris answers,” of Seventy. We’re—we were twins.”

“Allergies,” Stiles asks.

“She used to pretend to be allergic to nuts because she didn’t like them, and that’d let her weasel her way into getting her own batch of cookies or brownies,” Chris says, and there’s a pang in his heart.

Stiles keeps asking questions, sounding more and more desperate at every answer that Chris gives correctly. He only stops when his father drops a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Stiles,” he says, and he holds out a loose picture. Chris swallows thickly, and Stiles just looks lost at it. It’s definitely old, bent at the left-side corners, and it’s of Chris and Ellie when they were sixteen. They had been given a car to share. Ellie is sitting on the hood, Chris leaning up next to her. They’re both smiling—their smiles match exactly—arms around each other’s shoulders.

He’s aged a good twenty-five years since this picture was taken, but there’s no denying that it’s him.

“No way,” Stiles says again, but this time, it’s in defeat.

``

Chris and Ellie were eight years old when their mother started teaching them lore about the supernatural world. They learned about all the creatures that can be warded off with salt or iron or silver. They learned about wolfsbane and mountain ash and even how to read archaic Latin, which didn’t come in handy until the next year when they were finally shown the family beastiary.

They were ten when their father took over their training. They learned how to handle guns—pistols and rifles—and pack bullets with salt and wolfsbane. They learned how to fight with knives—which Ellie took after—and crossbows—which Chris was better with. They learned hand to hand combat, how to pick locks, and escape ropes and handcuffs. Both were put into a local soccer league—stamina increase—and Chris into football and Ellie into gymnastics.

It felt like the coolest thing in the world until they were twelve and their dad took them out on their first hunt. It was in Nebraska—the job took them all over the country, never staying in one place for too long—and three wolves had been caught picking off victims in the early hours of the morning in a rundown part of town. Being only twelve, the twins were there mostly on observation, watching their father and his associates as they closed in on the monsters. There was one opportunity for Chris to let loose an arrow to slow one of them down and give an elder hunter a clear shot to put it down with a silver bullet to the chest. It all ended when their father pulled out a broad sword and sliced the Alpha in half.

The twins were congratulated on how well they had kept it together, how well Chris had done to take the initiative and go for the shot when he had it. It wasn’t until after they had changed into pajamas and brushed their teeth and Ellie pulled Chris over into her bed that they started shaking. Ellie held her brother close, letting him muffle any sobs in her shoulder. He had just shot someone. Sure, it was a monster, but there had been a moment before everything started that he had looked like any other guy on the streets. And then they had watched their father kill someone.

Their mother talked to them about it the next morning, letting them stay home from school. Their father said she was being too lenient, but she had just waved him away. She explained that it was all right for them to be shaken, that they would get used to this new aspect of their lives. It wouldn’t be easy, because looking at a human face and pulling a trigger never should be, but it was all necessary. What they were doing was keeping other people safe.

``

Allison can’t believe what all she’s hearing. Her father had another sister that she had never been told about. And it’s not just any sister. It’s Stiles’s mother. Stiles’s is her aunt’s son. Stiles is her cousin.

She stares at her packmate, trying to wrap her head around that. Stiles had come into her life via Scott. Scott had been this cute, shy, slightly awkward boy who had won her over with his big puppy dog eyes, and Stiles had sort of been part of the whole package. Because for as much as Scott can sometimes lose sight of a bigger picture, you can’t take him without Stiles. The two boys are soulmates in their own rights, and even though Stiles had taken some getting used to, she’d certainly always enjoyed having him around. They’d become close in their own right after Allison had finally been clued in about the whole werewolf thing and the sort of using Stiles as a cover to continue secretly dating.

So Stiles is her friend. Stiles is her pack. And now Stiles is blood.

She’s drawn forcibly out of her own internal freak out when Stiles tries to draw in a breath, but it sounds like a painful gasp. Their dads turn to look at them, and the sheriff immediately reaches out for his son. “Stiles,” he asks.

Stiles stumbles back, his eyes wide and chest heaving, but Allison can clearly see that he’s not getting much air. It’s a panic attack. She jumps into action, darting around the sheriff—her uncle, wow, weird—and to Stiles’s side. He jerks, but he lets her wrap her arms around him. She presses her cheek against his and says lowly, “Hey, I need you to breathe with me, okay? In and out. In and out. Just right with me, Stiles.”

His hands fly up to grasp at her arm tightly. She doesn’t wince, but she thinks it might leave a bruise. His gasping sounds painful, and their dads hover over them. “Allison, he,” the sheriff starts.

“I’ve got him,” she says, voice still low and calm, despite how much she’d really like to just freak out. She’s seen Stiles have a couple of these attacks before. She hates them, and they scare her because it’s Stiles. Stiles is the one who takes care of them all, the one who makes sure the pack is always okay and the one who’s holding them all together. Seeing him lose it, it’s the equivalent of a child seeing their parents scared.

“G—Gerard,” Stiles manages to gasp out.

Allison’s arms tighten. “It’s okay. What about him?”

Stiles shakes his head, his eyes squeezing shut. “She—she—she named me after—after him,” he says.

And everything about that hits Allison. Gerard wasn’t just her grandfather. He was Stiles’s too. He was Stiles’s grandfather, and he tormented and threatened Stiles’s friends. He was Stiles’s grandfather, and he kidnapped Stiles and beat him into something close to a bloody pulp just to send a message to the pack.

“Oh, honey,” she says, readjusting her hold on Stiles, pulling him so that his face is buried into the curve of her neck. He clings tightly to her, shuddering as she slides one hand under his shirt, rubbing slow circles over his back. “It’s all right,” she says. “He’s gone now. He can’t hurt you anymore. And she—she didn’t know. She wouldn’t have known. You’re going to be all right. Just breathe with me.”

She vaguely hears her father telling the sheriff why exactly the notion of being related to Gerard Argent is causing his son to have a massive panic attack. She throws a warning glance over her shoulder, and it’s a visible effort for the sheriff to calm himself down. He knows he can’t get worked up here, not while Stiles is like this.

It takes far longer than Allison is okay with before Stiles’s breaths begin to even out. He’s still shaking in her arms, and he flinches when one of their dads moves. Eventually, the sheriff quietly suggests the Argents staying the night, that they have a guest room and couches. Allison tells her dad to take the guest room and that she’ll stay with Stiles. They look like they want to protest, but Stiles just slumps further into her hold, and that’s that.

She gets Stiles upstairs, and then immediately she has her phone out. She knows he probably doesn’t want to hash this out today or even tomorrow, but right now he needs more of the pack than just her. It’s within minutes of each other than Scott and Derek climb in through Stiles’s window. Scott immediately goes for the bed, pulling Stiles into his chest and curling around him. Derek spares a moment to ask Allison what’s happened.

There’s a dangerous tone to his voice, so she’s quick to assure him that it has nothing to do with the talk between the sheriff and her father, that it’s something else, that now isn’t the time to talk about it even a little bit, that Stiles just needs him. Derek doesn’t look happy—when does he ever—but he nods and pulls off his shoes and jacket before lying down on Stiles’s other side. It’s a very tight fit, but Allison worms her way into the pile, and they all fall asleep clinging to each other.

``

When Stiles wakes up the next morning, the first thing he notices is that he has a lot less room in his bed than usual. Sleepily, he recognizes Scott and Allison’s arms around him, and obviously then, those are their legs that are all tangled up in his. The confusion as to why they’re there only lasts for a second or two before he remembers everything from the previous night.

His mother was an Argent.

There’s so much that is just wrong about that statement. He doesn’t want to believe it, doesn’t want it to be true. He wants it all to be just a cruel dream, but he knows he’s awake, and Scott and Allison are here, holding onto him. It’s real.

He doesn’t have time to work himself into a panic before the bed dips by him, and Derek is there, resting a hand over his head. Stiles blinks up at him, having not noticed his Alpha in the room, but he remembers vaguely that Allison had called him over too. Derek doesn’t say anything, just sits there watching Stiles and accepting when Stiles stretches his neck just enough to bury his face into Derek’s thigh. Behind him, Scott lets out a small whine and tightens his hold.

Everything he learned about last night is not all right. But this is. Pack is all right. Pack is safe. He just needs to focus on that.

They don’t move after that for a while. There’s some off and on dozing, and it’s not until even Stiles and Allison can smell the bacon cooking downstairs—Stiles is going to have words with his father about that later, after he eats it all—that they all sit up.

Scott and Allison are changing into fresh shirts that Stiles offers them when Scott says, “Stiles, I know you probably don’t want me to ask, but what happened?”

Stiles looks over at him, and Scott is wearing that pinched, puppy dog expression that makes you want to take him in your arms and assure him that everything is going to be okay, even if you’re the one who actually needs the reassurance.

Stiles glances at Allison, and she sighs, “It’s kind of complicated.”

“Is it something we need to deal with,” Derek asks, blunt as always.

“No,” Allison answers. “Nothing can change it. It’s just going to take some time to wrap our heads around.”

Scott’s hand falls on Stiles’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’m right here, man,” he says. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, clapping him on the back. He doesn’t want to think about this, doesn’t want to be overwhelmed again. “Come on, let’s go downstairs and stop my dad from going swimming in bacon grease.”

Breakfast is kind of awkward, and by kind of, Stiles means pretty much entirely. His dad and Chris have cooked breakfast, a basic spread of eggs, bacon, and toast. There’s juice, and Stiles immediately frowns when he sees that his dad has ignored that in favor of whiskey. It’s not even eight in the morning.

But last night was pretty rough.

Chris doesn’t look surprised to see Scott and Derek come into the kitchen, although his left eye does do a little twitch. Stiles’s dad kind of stares but then just shrugs in a defeated sort of way and eats another slice of bacon around his son’s disapproving gaze.

No one talks as they pile food onto their plates, and the only sound as they eat is the clinking of the utensils against the porcelain. Some people—the werewolves—completely clean their plates, while the humans mostly push the food around. It’s obvious when everyone is finished, but no one wants to be the first to get up.

It’s finally Scott who breaks the silence. “Wow, this has been sufficiently awkward,” he says. Allison lets out a single, slightly hysterical sounding giggle. Stiles winces and kind of wishes he carried around a pad of those “you tried” gold stars. Or maybe he should just get one laminated and pin it to Scott’s shirt every morning.

Derek kicks Scott under the table, and after he yelps, he mutters, “Well, it has.”

“Go home, Scott,” Derek barks. “You’ve got school.”

School? Oh God, Stiles had forgotten about that. He groans and drops his head to the table, hitting it a little too hard. “Oww,” he moans.

“Maybe you should take a day,” his dad says. He’s trying to keep his tone light, but Stiles knows he’s serious. He hasn’t seen Stiles go through a big panic attack like that in a good while, but he always gives Stiles an out the next day.

A part of Stiles doesn’t want to take it, because if he just goes to school, it would mean that things are normal, that everything is okay and that he isn’t actually part of the Argent family, who are—or were as the case may be—all whack jobs in their own ways. He reluctantly even includes Allison in on that, because, and he loves her, but she’s had her issues in the past.

Scott must look like a puppy whose owner is about to walk out the door, because Derek all but growls, “School, Scott. Now.” And he walks around the table to march Scott out of the house.

“So call me maybe,” Scott yells in a sing-song tone right before the door shuts, and Stiles can’t help the smile.

He does end up staying home from school. Allison stares her father down until he agrees to let her skip as well. They go back up to Stiles’s room and talk about everything. Stiles so incredibly doesn’t want to, but Allison insists, and really, he knows it’s better than keeping it all bottled up.

They both get texts from the pack throughout the day. Lydia assures Stiles that she’ll be over right after school. He tells her it’s all right, but she just sends the same message again.

They come out of his room at lunch, and the four of them all just sort of spend the afternoon in the sitting room, not really talking or doing anything. Then three o’clock rolls around, and the pack is there fast enough that Stiles is pretty sure someone was breaking all sorts of traffic laws and maybe even a few of physics.

And it’s something else that Stiles doesn’t really want to do, but this isn’t something he should hide from the pack, so they tell them.

“Are you shitting me,” Erica asks after a few moments of silence.

Stiles shakes his head and slides the picture that his dad found yesterday across the coffee table and then points up at the frame that’s been put back on the fireplace. They all lean forward to get a good look, and just about all of them wince. Lydia slips her hand in his, Scott rubs circles on his back, and Jackson, the sweet angel of compassion, reaches across the table, claps Stiles on the shoulder, and says, “That’s rough, buddy.”

Stiles takes in a deep breath and looks up at Derek. It took a lot for Derek to want to trust Allison in the pack. Part of that was because of her going off the deep end for a while, but a lot of it was just because she’s an Argent. And Stiles, he’s not going to be able to take it if Derek washes his hands of Stiles for this. The logical part of his brain says he’s being ridiculous. His and Derek’s relationship has come a long way since they met, and they have had this conversation before. Stiles is pack, and he is not worthless. But those old insecurities are hard to get rid of sometimes.

Derek looks a bit wrecked as he stares at the photo on the table. Then, he turns a poker face up to meet Stiles’s gaze. And Stiles relaxes a bit. Because Derek can poker face all that he wants. Stiles knows him. He knows how to interpret all the silent looks. Derek is uncomfortable right now. He’s been thrown for a loop hearing this, but he’ll be okay with it. He won’t turn his back on Stiles.

Even though freaking Kate Argent was his aunt. Jesus Christ.

``

The twins had already been on their first hunt when their parents sat them down to tell them that they would be having a new little sibling.

“Gross,” Ellie said, almost spaced out. Next to her, Chris just nodded. Their mother rolled her eyes and waved them away.

Once they got past the whole oh-my-god-mom-and-dad-still-do-that reaction, they thought it would actually be kind of neat to have a little sibling. Chris was sure it was going to be a boy, and Ellie just said that she expected twenty dollars from him come seven months.

Their mother went into labor the night that they killed their first wolves. It was a small pack in Pasadena, only four strong. Their uncles had rounded the monsters up before stepping aside to let the twins take aim. Two arrows, two bullets, and it was over. Easy and impossible at the same time.

They’d been ready to just drop onto the couches and pass out, but there was a note taped to the door that informed them that their parents were at the hospital. Their uncles sent them upstairs to change out of the kind of obvious all black getups and to properly disarm—each, of course, kept a silver knife hidden under their clothes. It was a basic rule, and just about the stupidest one to break.

It was after three in the morning when they finally got up to the hospital, and a nurse led them up to their mother’s room. She was reading a magazine, and their dad was going over some invoices. When the nurse left the room, they gave their updates on the hunt, received their praises, and were left to their own devices. It was still going to be a while before the baby came.

A while turned out to be something like twenty-seven hours, and then their little sister Katherine came screaming into the world. Chris snickered as he passed his twin a crisp twenty, and Ellie fixed their mom with a dry look. “Really,” she asked. “Really? What did I do to you?”

“You came second,” their mom replied simply.

``

The next day is Saturday, so Stiles has the whole weekend to laze around his house and try to wrap his head around the freaking atomic bomb Chris Argent dropped on him. Allison calls him that morning, a bit shy and hesitant in her offer to bring over the box of pictures that her father found in their attic.

The part of him that’s freaking out wants to say no and hang up on her. The rest of him is greedy and wants to see anything and everything that involves his mother. So Allison and Chris are at their house again less than an hour later, dragging in large boxes full of pictures. At Stiles and his dad’s wide eyed looks, Chris says, “Our mom was really big on picture taking.”

And yeah, apparently she was. There’s more pictures than Stiles would ever know what to do with, pictures that document everything from the big milestones to the most mundane of events. There’s hardly ever a picture of one twin without the other, and Chris says with a heavy sort of fondness that they had been pretty close to inseparable when they were kids. Kate pops up in a few pictures, a tiny little thing that looks like pictures that Stiles has seen of Allison when she was a kid, although with lighter hair. And the three of them look happy. It’s not that obviously staged because there’s a camera pointed on them sort of happiness. They just look happy.

There are home videos in the boxes too, and his dad has to go fish out the old VCR from the attic so they can see what’s on them. It’s the basic sort of stuff for a while, birthdays and Christmas mornings and sporting events. Then there’s one of each twin going through some sort of training obstacle course, and holy shit, the way his mom is running and jumping and attacking the dummies set up, it’s like an action movie.

His mom was a total badass. She would have wiped the floor with everyone in the pack.

So finally, Stiles has to ask, “What the hell happened?”

``

By the time Kate had gotten older and didn’t need their mother’s constant attention, Ellie had been put into training to one day take over as head of the family. The Argents were a matriarchal family, the children all raised as warriors but the women also prepped as leaders. When her mother stepped down, it would be Ellie’s job to make all the decisions in the family about how their unique business was conducted. 

The thing was though, the entire notion was pretty much terrifying. It was easier to be a follower, to just point the gun where she was told rather than to map out the shot herself. It was easier to just pack her things up and move where her parents said rather than have to sit around and dwell and worry and think if they had overstayed their welcome in any town, if they were becoming too suspicious.

She just wanted to be able to do something normal for a little while, maybe apply to some colleges and get away from hunting for a bit. Knowing about all the things that go bump in the night, it was tiring. Chris sympathized with her, but he wasn’t about to make any sort of moves. That wasn’t really what was expected of them. The family had an arms business, legal and profitable, so, according to their father, there was absolutely no reason at all to go to college and waste the time and money. Their mother agreed, and that was that.

It didn’t stop Ellie from dreaming.

But dreams had their own place, and she had to put most of her efforts and focus into the job and training. When she turned eighteen, her mother decided that she was ready to call the shots on some individual missions. Nothing too drastic at first, but things took a hard left turn while they were in Rhode Island.

The family usually wasn’t in one place for very long. The job took them all over the country. As it happened, they had managed to settle as well as the Argents could, having been in town for almost three months. There were signs of a fairly large pack in the area, and these wolves were doing well to keep a low profile and cover their tracks when they did make moves out to hunt.

They were just starting to make decent headway when Chris’s friend Paul, out at night at the wrong place in the wrong time, was bit. The next night was the full moon, and while they were chasing him down, he took a chunk out of one hunter’s leg, bringing them down two men as he needed to be rushed to the hospital.

When they finally caught Paul, it was Ellie’s call if he lived or died.

There were a lot of facts to consider. Paul was a brand new wolf, new enough that the local pack’s Alpha hadn’t even confronted him yet. So Paul was a Beta, which meant, if he went with the pack, he’d have wolves to teach him and he’d quickly learn control. But they were here to kill off the pack, and if she let Paul go, he’d become an Omega, and the lone wolf never survives.

But Ellie knew Paul. He’d been over to their house. She and Chris hung out with him. He was a nice guy, funny and smart, someone who you’d expect to have a bright future. But there he sat in the mud, snarling and howling as his eyes gleamed gold and he fought to break out of the bonds than held him down. His face was distorted around the fangs that flashed in the moonlight. He didn’t look like himself. He looked like a monster.

“You have a decision to make,” their father said.

“Chris,” Ellie started, and her voice was too weak, too pathetic.

“This isn’t your brother’s call. It’s yours,” their father snapped. “Make it.”

How was she supposed to do that? Everything she did was with her brother. How could she make a call without his input? But Chris wasn’t even looking at her. His shoulders were tense, his gun held tightly in his hand, and he wasn’t looking at her.

Ellie couldn’t let Paul go. He was rabid, all but foaming at the mouth in his bloodlust. If he didn’t kill someone on this moon, it could be the next, and that death would be on her. But she couldn’t kill him. He was a friend, just about as good a friend as they had ever made outside of the family.

“Chris,” she tried again, and before their father could scold her, he gritted out, “Just make the call.”

And there really was only one thing she could say. Two tears fell from her eyes and she declared, “Kill him.”

“That’s my girl,” their father said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Chris, you heard your sister.”

And then her brother finally looked up at her, eyes wide and face pale. Ellie shook her head. “No, can’t someone else,” she tried, but their father shook his head.

“It’s not always that cut and dry,” he said. “This is a lesson you both need to learn. Chris, do it.”

His hand was shaking, but he raised the gun and fired off a shot. Paul was hit in the chest, and he howled, a terrible noise that made Ellie’s blood run cold. It didn’t happen immediately. Paul only had a few more seconds left in him, but he spent those seconds still trying to claw his way forward, still trying to get a taste of fresh blood.

As soon as he fell still and silent, Chris spun on his heel and nearly fled. Ellie ducked around their father and ran after him. “Chris, wait!” He didn’t answer, just kept going. She almost had to tackle him to get him to stop. “Chris, I’m sorry. I—I had to. He was—you saw.”

He just stared down at her, blue eyes—one of the only features they didn’t share—hard and cold and raging.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, clinging to the sleeve of his jacket. “I didn’t want to. I just—I had to. Chris, please, please, don’t be mad at me. I can’t—I can’t take that.” The tears were there again, falling in hot trails down her cheeks.

“You did what you had to,” Chris said, his voice quiet. She looked up, hopeful at the lack of an accusatory tone. “I know you had to. I just—he was—“

“Our friend,” Ellie finished.

“And I just shot him in the chest,” Chris said tightly. “So, can I—I need some alone time, okay?” And he pried her hands away and stepped around her, disappearing into the dark of the night.

When they got home, her mother praised her for making the call, and Ellie knew she should be glad to have that praise, that she should be all but preening, but with Chris unable to talk to her, to not even be able to be around her, she felt lost and wrong. She went up the stairs and meant to lock herself in her room, but her feet took her one more door down to Chris’s room, and she curled up on his bed to wait for him.

It was hours later, nearing dawn, when he came back. Ellie was facing the wall opposite the door, staring at his shadow cast there by the nightlights in the hallway. He was still for a few moments before slowly turning back and closing the door, and Ellie just clung to his pillow and cried.

``

It took a few days, but Chris began talking to her again. It wasn’t the same though, and Ellie finally had to say something about it as they drove their car behind their parents and Kate, moving up further north to check out rumors of a pack in Maine.

Chris’s jaw was tense, and he kept his eyes locked on the road. “I know it’s not your fault, Ellie,” he said. “I just—it’s one thing to know in theory that you’re going to take Mom’s place, but it’s another thing entirely to actually see my sister order someone’s execution.”

Ellie winced. “I didn’t like it,” she muttered.

“But you’ll do it again,” Chris said. “Just like I’ll have to pull the trigger again and again. It’s just what we do. It’s neither of our faults.”

“We could leave,” Ellie blurted, and Chris almost swerved.

“What,” he cried, head jerking to gape at her.

She hadn’t meant to say it, but now that it was out there. “We could leave,” she repeated. “I—um—I sort of applied to some colleges.”

“Oh, dammit, Ellie,” Chris snapped. “You know what Dad said.”

“I wasn’t serious about them,” Ellie said. “I just wanted to see if I could get in, you know, if there would have ever been a chance for something normal. And I’ve got scholarships too. Basically everything would be paid for, and with all my savings, Chris, we could do it. We could leave and never have to worry about killing people—“

“Monsters,” Chris said tightly, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. “They’re monsters.”

Ellie nodded slowly. They’d had that talk before. It was hard to kill something with a human face. They couldn’t think of them as people. They had to be monsters, or else they could never get the job done.

“And that’s not going to happen,” Chris added. “It’s—it’s a nice dream, but that’s all that it is. We have a job to do. If we stopped, gave up, the people who those things kill, it would be on us.”

“I just want to be normal,” Ellie said, trying to hold onto her composure.

With a sigh, Chris reached across the console and took her hand. He gave it a squeeze and said, “I know you do. It’s just not in the cards for us.”

They arrived at the new house a couple of hours after that and spent the afternoon bringing in boxes and unloading. Their mother already had a good idea of where she wanted things, so it made the task easier. It was late when everyone crashed, and Ellie made her decision. She took the box and bag she’d had prepared for weeks, left her necklace on Kate’s bedside table, tucked a note in her brother’s hand and kissed his forehead. And then she left, intent on never looking back.

``

It takes Stiles a while to reconcile the whole thing. Thinking of Allison as his cousin really isn’t a chore. She’s one of his best friends, a packmate, and one day probably his honorary sister-in-law. He’s never going to think of Chris as his uncle, the idea of Kate as his aunt is disgusting, and the mere thought of Gerard makes his stomach turn.

It takes a while, some talks, and finally Derek slapping him upside the head for Stiles to decide that his mother being an Argent doesn’t change him, and it certainly doesn’t change his memories of her. She was still the perfect mother, beautiful, smart, fun, comforting, and he doesn’t love her any less for this. He just happens to know more about her. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter basically just follows the years from Ellie leaving the family up until her death, each section just a comparison as to how each twin is doing.

It’s the most difficult decision she’s ever made, but she can’t do it anymore. She can’t be this person who can so carelessly order the death of another living, thinking creature. It doesn’t matter what she’s been taught all her life, it doesn’t matter what they turn into under the light of the full moon. There is some shred of humanity in them, and she can’t be the one to decide if they live or die.

Ellie thinks this would be easier if she was just leaving her parents behind. Of course she loves them; she loves them so much, but she can’t be what they want her to be, and that’s going to taint the way they view each other. It’s leaving Chris and Kate that hurts so badly.

Kate, her tiny little sister, who she hasn’t even really gotten to know yet. Kate’s only five years old, a bright bundle of energy and light. She’s always smiling, always finding excitement in everything. It’s a view that Ellie hasn’t understood in years.

Ellie knows that leaving is going to make her parents furious. Her father had already all but tore her a new one just for mentioning that she’d like to go off to college and try the normal life for a while. Her actually leaving is going to push him over the edge, and she’s not likely to be a part of their lives for a long time. She’s going to miss Kate growing into her own, seeing her become a woman, a sister that she can take shopping and gab with.

Kate doesn’t know about the night job yet. She’s only five, still too young to have that knowledge. She’s not going to understand why her big sister has left. All Ellie can do is leave her the necklace that their mother had given her when she started hunting and just hope that one day Kate can forgive her.

Even worse than leaving Kate is leaving Chris. He’s her twin. She has never in her life been without him. The very idea, it turns her stomach and terrifies her. She leaves her note with him, because he’s the only one who might understand, the only one who might not hate her for this.

She wishes desperately that he’d come with her. She has enough money saved up to support them both for a little bit before they’d need to get jobs, but Chris has always been smart and reliable. People seem to know instinctively that he can be trusted, and he’s always risen quickly in the ranks with any after school job he’s had. They’d be fine. They’d be away from all this.

But he won’t come. He doesn’t like what the family does, but he sees it as necessary, a duty that they can’t turn their backs on.

But Ellie can’t do it anymore, and if she has to leave her twin behind, then she’ll do it. She’ll leave and not look back, even as the tears slide down her cheeks.

``

Their parents are furious. Like, beyond raging. Enough to the point that their yelling makes Kate cry, and Chris is forced to take her out of the house and drive around until he finds a diner that is open for breakfast, just to get her away for a little while.

He’d woken up that morning with a note clenched in his hand, and as he’d read it, his heart had dropped completely into his stomach. A quick run down the hall had confirmed it. Ellie was gone.

Her note hadn’t said where she was going exactly, an obviously conscious decision to keep them from following her and dragging her back. And Chris has no idea as to where she’d head. She’d mentioned applying all over the country to different schools, but she hadn’t said any by name. She could be anywhere. 

Chris just stares down into his mug of coffee while Kate munches on her short stack, kicking her legs under the table. He hadn’t thought Ellie was serious. He hadn’t thought that she’d actually leave. He’d though she was just upset, just venting and wishing that things could be different. And he wishes that too sometimes, but enough to leave? To abandon them all?

She’d never told him she was that desperate.

And he hates himself because she’s his twin. He should have known. He should have seen that she was hanging on by a thread, and he should have caught her.

They’ve never been apart, not for more than a few hours at a time. He doesn’t know what to think or what to do. He doesn’t know how to do anything without Ellie around.

When they get back to the house, their mother takes Kate upstairs, and their father informs Chris that Ellie no longer has a place in the family, that if she sees fit to turn her back on them, then they will do so in turn. As far as the Argent family is concerned, Ellie is dead.

Chris knows his father very well. His personality has always been stronger than his wife’s, so despite controlling the family, she often defers to his opinions. This decision is being made in the heat of the moment, with pure emotion, but their father will stick by it, even when time has passed and the betrayal isn’t raw. Even if their mother is ready to forgive, it won’t matter. Their father is stubborn, and Chris, while Gerard Argent is alive, will never see his sister again and remain in his father’s good graces.

And so, he goes up to his room and tries desperately—failing miserably—to not cry.

``

Ellie ends up in Stanford, and, other than the desperate longing to see her family again, it’s everything she ever dreamed. It’s mundane and boring and perfect. There are classes and bills and having to feed herself and do her own laundry. There are football games and fraternity parties.

She waits a few months before she tries to call the family, but they’ve already moved on, to where, she obviously has no clue. She’s lost them. It’s a rough night that involves too much of a bottle of Jack, but she gets through it and keeps on going.

She keeps studying, keeps learning and experiencing life like normal people. She still always carries a silver knife on her—it’s just common sense with all the things she knows about what’s out there—but she never has to use it, not even walking home from late night classes against perfectly normal human threats.

In four years, she’s done, a diploma in hand, and her entire life is ahead of her.

``

He has to relearn everything. Chris had never really considered that he’d ever be without his twin, and so, now that she’s gone, he’s relearning how to fight. Because before, he’d always had her there at his back. He watched out for her blind spots, and she had covered his. They’d been a team, but now he’s alone and everything is different.

Life becomes one long, endless hunt. They come into a town, take care of the problem, and then leave again. He never has time to make connections with anyone outside of the family and their associates. He just does what’s expected of him, and everything about it is empty.

``

She ends up in a town called Beacon Hills that’s actually bigger than it seems, but still no one has ever heard of it. She’s an accountant—nice and normal—in the federal buildings and one day they send her down to the county’s sheriff department to help work out some discrepancies in the budget.

She spends the morning going through receipts and books and computer files with the department’s secretary. It’s tedious, and there’s a part of her that just loves it. She realizes that it’s absolutely ridiculous, but she doesn’t care.

She’s heading out for lunch when she bodily collides with someone, almost dropping to the ground in a mess of flailing limbs, but the someone catches her arm and steadies her. And when Ellie looks up to meet the eyes of her savior, she gets hit with a thunderbolt and just about loses all cognitive brain function.

He’s a man in a deputy’s uniform, probably not quite thirty, with blonde hair and blue eyes, which are wide and blinking down at her. Ellie stares at him, trying to move or say something, but absolutely nothing is coming to mind. She just stares and tries to keep her heart from jumping out of her mouth.

There’s a not very subtle cough from the secretary’s desk, and they both finally move, jumping apart and smiling sheepishly around blushes. Ellie feels like a moron, but in a weirdly good way. “Um, hi,” he says, sticking out his hand. “John Stilinski.”

“Elikonida Argent,” she says and immediately winces. “Oh my God, I have no idea why I just said my full name, especially after you threw out John. That’s like the most normal thing ever, and then there’s my freak show of a name. And wow, the rambling. Also good. I’m Ellie.”

She wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole, because wow, could she be more of a spaz? But John doesn’t seem to mind. He’s laughing, not even slightly meanly. “Are you—um—you new to the department or—?”

“I’m with the county treasury,” Ellie says, holding up a binder full of notes. “Here to fix your budget.”

“Great,” he says. He wets his lips—Ellie’s pretty sure her staring at that is way too obvious—and says, “So, Beacon Hills is pretty small. You get to know everyone fast, but I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Just moved about a month ago,” Ellie says, and why is she nodding that much. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with her?

“Hey, Stilinski,” someone calls from down the hall. “Got that shop lifter set up in room three for you to get his info.”

“Yeah,” he calls, looking back down at Ellie. “Yeah, I have to go handle that.”

“Sure,” she says. “Lunch time for me.”

“Yum,” he says, and his face does this weird little spasm that makes her want to laugh. They do a really awkward side step around each other, and he says, “It was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, you too,” she answers.

“Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“That’d be great,” she says, and she backs away for a few steps before turning to walk properly. She still glances over her shoulder a few times. John is still standing there, watching her go.

Out in the parking lot, Ellie curses herself under her breath. She’s a mess, a ridiculous mess. What was that spectacle in there? It’s not like that was her first rodeo, the first time interacting with a guy who wasn’t part of her family. She’s never been that graceless and weird before.

John has to think she’s a freak or something.

“Hey, Miss Argent, wait,” a voice calls, and she turns to see John jogging up to her. He stops, a little bit in her personal bubble, and he’s looking down at her with a sort of dazed expression, and Ellie’s heart is thundering in her chest. “It is Miss, right?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Ellie works too.”

“Ellie,” he says, wetting his lips again. All right, seriously, he needs to stop that. “Okay, so normally I don’t do this, I mean, having just—like just—met you and everything, but yeah, here goes. Would you maybe want to get dinner with me tonight?”

She’s pretty sure her body has forgotten how to breathe, so she just nods and kind of squeaks out an answer.

John’s mouth is stretched in a wide grin that makes him seem brighter than the sun. “Great,” he says, also sort of breathless. “I get off shift around six, so is seven all right?”

“Seven’s perfect,” she answers.

“Great,” he repeats and then starts patting down his pockets. “Pen, pen,” he mutters.

Ellie pops open her binder and pulls out a business card. “How about this,” she asks, holding it out to him.

“Perfect,” he says, taking it carefully. “So, seven?”

“Seven,” she echoes.

“STILINSKI, NOW,” the same voice from earlier bellows out from the station.

“Crap,” he yelps. “Gotta go. I’ll call you.” He runs off, and Ellie barely waits for him to get back inside before letting out a squeal and breaking out into some kind of manic victory dance.

``

Chris meets Victoria through their parents. Another family of hunters, they’ve long been associates of the Argents’, and it’s very, very obvious that their parents would love for them to date.

And it’s not the worst idea Chris has ever heard. Victoria is a beautiful woman, tall and regal, with light eyes and dark hair. She’s a hunter through and through, fierce and tough. She’s actually tough enough that Chris is pretty sure he would do well to never actually have to fight her. She’d probably kick his ass and just laugh at his puny attempts to hurt her.

One of the things he likes the most about her is how well she separates the job from everything else in life. If it needs to be discussed or handled, she’s got it covered, but she’s not like so many other hunters—his parents included—that Chris has met. It’s not an all-consuming thing for her, something that’s always at the forefront of her mind and always needing to be discussed. And Chris doesn’t get enjoyment from the job, so it’s a nice and welcome change.

It’s nice being around her. It feels like someone has his back again.

``

The news of her pregnancy has them all but bouncing off the walls in excitement. There’s so much to do. They need a house, rather than the apartment they’ve been in since they got married. They need to set up a college fund, start the search for a doctor, handle new bits of insurance.

The morning sickness doesn’t last long, thankfully, and really none of the symptoms hit her that bad. Sure, her feet swell easily and her back is killing her most of the time, but really it’s not too bad. And if John really thinks that peanut butter on a cracker drizzled with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar is gross, well, he’s the one missing out, isn’t he?

Her college friends throw her a shower in her fifth month, and the nursery is finished by the middle of her seventh. She’s restless, a heavy nester, always moving things around and making sure it’s all perfect and ready for the baby.

Finally, all that’s left is deciding a name. She’s got a small spiral that she keeps ideas in. John tries to peek into it all the time, but she does her best to keep it out of his reach. He’s sort of playfully irritated with her about it. He wants to know what she’s thinking, because, after all, this is his kid too, and he’s going to have to resign himself if it’s something weird.

“Is that a stab at my name,” she asks over a bowl of ice cream with trail mix.

“Honey, no one can make fun of your name more than you do,” he answers, snatching his hand back as she swats away his attempts to get into the snack bag.

She goes into labor in the middle of May, and it’s a full twenty-nine hours before the doctors hand Ellie their squirming son. She’s sort of crying as she holds him close, and John wraps his arms around them both, and he can’t even begin to fathom how much he loves this tiny, red-faced little boy that’s wrapped up in a blue blanket. He’s the most perfect thing that John has ever seen.

The absolute beauty and wonder of the moment is kind of ruined when his wife, still smiling down at their newborn son, answers the nurse’s inquiry as to the baby’s name. They had already decided months ago that she would be the one to name the child, considering she was the one who had to carry him around and then spend several hours in excruciating pain giving birth. And he’s really totally fine with that decision—even as she’s kept all her ideas from him secret—but he still has to ask, “Are you sure, honey?”

Ellie glances up at him, a slight frown line forming between her brows. “That was my father’s name,” she says slowly, very obviously giving him a chance to take it back. “Or, well, his middle name. His first name was—yeah, no. It was an old man’s name. Can’t give that to a newborn baby.”

“So you’re going with,” he trails off, waving his hand.

“I have no idea how you would go about spelling that,” the nurse says, the pen hovering over the clipboard and a dazed expression clouding her face.

John can totally sympathize. “She just said it, and I still don’t even know how to pronounce it,” he says.

“Well, you better learn, because that is your son’s name,” she says, waving the nurse closer and taking the pen to fill in the form for her. The nurse makes a face at the paper as she steps away, turning it on its side as if that will suddenly make the letters become legible.

John rubs a hand over his face, tired but still deliriously happy. “Gonna have to think up a nickname, huh, sport,” he says, leaning over to touch the soft not-quite-dark-enough-to-be-brown fuzz on his son’s head. “Or else that playground is going to be brutal.”

``

Allison is born almost nine months to the day after they’re married. They get all the jokes about it, and Chris had kind of wanted to bury his head in the sand for forever when his own mother had commented about not wasting any time.

Kate is ecstatic to have a niece and pouts every time someone else wants to hold her. It warms Chris’s heart to watch. Kate doesn’t talk about Ellie. She left when Kate was so young that Kate really doesn’t have many memories of her, but the very few times Kate has mentioned her to Chris, she’s said she feels cheated that she didn’t get to have a sister too.

Kate is only eleven, closer in age to Allison than she is to Chris. Sure, she’s Allison aunt, but she can be that sister figure too. Kate is vibrant and full of life. Chris knows she’ll do well in that role.

They’ve decided, while Allison is still so new, that they’re going to stick to one town for a while. But that doesn’t mean there still isn’t work to do. So Chris sets up shop, running the usual arms business during the day and traveling out of town if someone needs a hand on a job.

He doesn’t want to do it, hates himself a little bit, but Victoria encourages him, soothing away his worries. “The job is bigger than any of us,” she says. “And your girls will still be here when you get back.” It’s not a deep or particularly moving speech, but it’s always sincere, and so Chris goes, maybe for a couple of days at a time.

And when he comes home in the dead of night, tired and unshaved and maybe with blood on his clothes, he heads immediately for the nursery. He has to see Allison, has to see why he’s still doing all of this. Because, when he’s honest with himself about this, he really doesn’t care what happens to other people. He doesn’t know them. Maybe they were some kind of low lives, someone out to go rob an innocent old lady, an abusive boyfriend, or a woman about to kill her husband for his life insurance. So what if they get attacked by a werewolf?

What matters is Allison. Chris will keep fighting, but it’s all for her, so that she can grow up in a safer world. Having her is like having Ellie back. Allison is a part of him, in a way that absolutely no one else can be, and that’s a feeling he’s only ever felt before with his twin.

``

She receives the call at some ungodly hour of the morning. For a second, she grumbles out for John to pick it up before remembering that he’s working a night shift. And then she’s flying up out of the bed to answer the phone. It’s John’s partner, and he’s been shot.

She barely changes out of her pajamas, just shoving on the first pair of pants she comes across. She’s hopping into her shoes all the way down to the nursery, and she’s a hurricane as she gathers up diapers, binkeys, toys, and everything the baby would need for a day or so.

She tries to not speed down the roads, because her son is sleeping in the backseat, but she’s desperate to get to the hospital. John is still in surgery, so with the nursing staff unable to give her any answers, she turns to his partner.

Apparently it was supposed to be a simple drugs bust, and it was just one of those things where it went wrong. Ellie almost wants to yell, to tell him that he should have been watching out for John, but she knows better. She’s been on hunts where things go wrong. Sometimes someone screws up, but sometimes it’s just crappy luck.

His partner seems to think everything will be just fine. It was a shoulder shot, but he tells her that for the entire ride up to the hospital, John was awake and more bitchy than freaked out.

And everything is okay. The doctor comes out to tell them that the surgery went perfectly and that with proper rehabilitation, he’ll recover full use of his arm in about three months. They’re allowed back into the room, and it’s around the time that his parents get in from Sacramento that John wakes up. Everyone worries and fusses and scolds him for getting hurt, and he’s still looped out on the drugs, so his responses are slurred and nonsensical.

Ellie isn’t about to leave until John does, so his parents take the baby back to the house. John is more coherent the next time he wakes up, and he tries to disappear into the sheets with a sheepish grin as she looms over him and assures him that she is furious and that he so owes her when he’s better.

He isn’t kept long, as everything is looking so well. Ellie is given the instructions for his care and his medications, and as they’re walking out, the doctor hands her a card with an appointment reminder for John’s checkup. John’s left arm is wrapped up in a sling, so she can’t hold his hand on the drive home, which leads to her tapping nervously on the steering wheel until he twists to reach for her with his good hand. Ellie offers him a look that’s half disapproving and half overwhelmingly affectionate.

They get back home and are hardly in the door before their son comes barreling—in as much as a two year old can; really it’s more of a waddle—for John’s legs with a delighted cry of “Daddy!”

John stoops to sweep the boy up, and Ellie hisses, “John!”

Over his shoulder, John says, “You and the doctors can say whatever you want, but there is no way I’m not going to pick up my son. How you doing, squirt?”

“You got boo-boos, Daddy,” he asks, looking with big eyes at John’s injured arm.

“Just a little one,” John says, and their son nods before leaning over to kiss his shoulder and ask, “Better?”

“Almost perfect,” John assures him, walking them into the living room. Ellie smiles after them. She’s still mad, but everything’s going to be okay.

``

It wasn’t supposed to be much of anything, but there was a complication with the anesthesia, and now his mother is dead. It’s not Chris’s first experience with death by a long shot, not even his first experience losing someone in the family, but it’s his mother, and it just really sucks.

Allison is three years old, and she’s only met her grandmother a handful of times, mostly on holidays. She has almost no understanding of the situation outside of her Daddy and Aunt Kate are sad about something.

The little girl spends the wake asleep on Chris’s shoulder and then curled up in Victoria’s lap for the funeral. After his mother is buried, they have to host a memorial lunch of sorts, and Chris is exhausted by the end of it, but it’s still not over. Because as soon as the last guest leaves, they have family business to discuss.

He comes down into the kitchen after putting Allison down for a nap, and everyone is seated at the table. He pulls out a chair next to Victoria, and his father immediately jumps in. “The spot should have gone to Kate,” he says, and Kate perks up for a half a second. “You’re doing well, sweetheart, but you’re still too young. You need to be at least eighteen.”

“Just another four years,” Kate whines, and their father reaches over to pat her hand.

“Sorry, my dear,” he says and then turns to Victoria. “It’s yours.”

Victoria has on her game face, no emotions betrayed. “Temporarily or,” she asks, trailing off.

“Possibly,” he says. “But you have a daughter, and it’s her right as much as Kate’s to have this position. We’ll see how things play out.” Kate pouts a bit, but there’s nothing more to be done about that. She’s being trained, and she’s more enthusiastic about the whole job than Chris or Ellie ever were, but she’s still far too young and inexperienced for the position as family head.

Victoria isn’t an Argent by blood, but she too comes from a long line of hunters. She’s had the same upbringing, the same experiences. She can more than handle this.

“Actually,” Victoria says, “Chris and I have been talking, and we aren’t sure we’re going to be bringing Allison into all of this.”

Kate’s eyes go wide, and she looks back and forth between them and their father. He’s gone completely still, expression unchanged but somehow still undoubtedly more dangerous. “Excuse me,” he asks.

“We may change our mind later, but as it stands, we aren’t interested in raising Allison in this life,” Victoria rephrases.

“You’re actually going to do this,” his father almost hisses. “You’re going to do like—like she did?”

“I’m not leaving,” Chris says. “We’re still in this. We’re still committed to taking them down, but Allison is our daughter, and no one has any say in how we decide to raise her.”

“And you’re comfortable with that,” he asks condescendingly. “You’re comfortable, with all your knowledge of what’s out there, you’re comfortable letting your daughter grow up weak? You’re comfortable with letting her be a walking meal ticket for the monsters?”

“Chris,” Kate starts, but he holds up a hand.

“I’m not going to let her walk around unprotected,” Chris says. “When she’s old enough, I’ll teach her how to shoot. She’ll take self-defense lessons. She won’t be helpless or weak, but we just aren’t sure we want her to be a hunter.”

“Why not,” Kate asks. “Being a hunter is the coolest thing ever.”

He wants to tell her that she’s wrong, that’s she just young and hasn’t seen all of the ugly sides of it yet. She’s only ever gone out under the protection of either him or their father, and never on a too dangerous job. She’s never been on her own, never had to make that impossible call before.

But that’s not for Chris to say. She’s his sister, but that sort of thing is for their father to deal with. “This is our decision,” Chris says again. “And our right as Allison’s parents.”

“We’re still in the life,” Victoria says. “I’ll still do my job, and Chris will do his, but until further notice, Allison isn’t involved.”

“I don’t agree with this,” his father says.

“You don’t have to,” Victoria retorts. He glares at her, and Chris just takes her hand under the table, trying not to smile fondly at her.

There’s a bit of a fight about it all. Chris and Victoria refuse to budge, and his father is offended and affronted that they’re taking Allison out of the game before she’s even had a chance. Chris doesn’t want her to have a chance. Ellie had a chance, decided no, and was completely cast out from the family. He hasn’t seen his sister in almost ten years. He doesn’t know where she is or even if she’s alive. And he’s not going to risk something like that happening to Allison.

Kate’s trying to stick to the middle, telling Chris that he shouldn’t be so hasty and their dad that Chris is probably just upset about their mom, that everything will work out, and no one needs to get their panties into such a big twist.

It’s not in any way a pleasant parting when Chris and Victoria leave in the morning, a full two days earlier than planned.

``

Their son comes home from his first day of kindergarten declaring that he has a best friend and that he’s going to be called Stiles now, because no one can figure out how to say his name. Ellie doesn’t miss the way John pumps his fist in excitement at having a pronounceable name for him that’s not sport or champ or son. The little boy blinks big eyes up at her—her own eyes, so really she ought to be immune to them—and so, from now on, Stiles it is.

He and Scott, the little boy who gave him the nickname, become completely inseparable. If Stiles isn’t asking her if he can go to Scott’s house, he’s asking her to call Scott’s mom so that Scott can come over here. They love all the same things and are in equal agreement about what all is gross.

One afternoon just before Christmas, Ellie pulls up to the front of the carpool line, expecting both Stiles and Scott to clamber into the car, but it’s only Stiles, who looks up at her with big, wide eyes.

“Hey, baby,” she says. “Where’s Scott?”

“His mom had to come take him to the hospital,” Stiles says miserably.

“What happened,” she asks, pulling away.

“We were out on the playground, and Jackson was chasing us and being really mean, and Scott had to stop running because he couldn’t breathe, and Jackson started making fun of him. And Mom, he really couldn’t breathe, and the teacher had to take him to the office. She came back and said he went to the hospital,” Stiles explains and looks ready to cry by the end of it.

Ellie reaches across the console and rubs his shoulders. “It’s okay, baby,” she says. “I’m sure Scott will be just fine. Do you want to run by the hospital and see if he’s still there?”

“Can we,” Stiles asks.

It’s asthma, as it turns out. Scott’s got a pretty bad case of it, and all the running around had triggered an attack. He’ll be fine; he’s just got to keep up with an inhaler.

“Jackson is a jerk,” Stiles says on the ride home, slumped in his seat and glaring out the window.

“Stiles,” Ellie warns.

“He is,” Stiles says indignantly. “Scott was hurt, and he was just laughing at him. I’d like to punch him right in the face.”

“Stiles,” she cries. He slumps down even further, almost in danger of slipping right off the seat. He’s crossed his arms, and stuck out his lower lip in a pout, but there are real tears welling up in his eyes.

They pull into the driveway, and Ellie sits Stiles down on the front porch, pulling him close to her side. “Honey, violence isn’t the way to solve problems,” she says.

“It works in cartoons,” he says.

“Those are cartoons,” she answers, poking his side. He squeals and tries to get away, but she holds him close. “Dealing with a bully is tricky, Stiles,” she says.

“Jackson just thinks that because he’s bigger than us and because his parents are lawyers that he’s better than everyone,” Stiles complains. “He’s not.”

“No, he isn’t,” Ellie says.

“Because Scott’s mom makes people not be sick anymore,” Stiles says. “And Dad protects people. And you—you do something with money and numbers.”

She chuckles. “Accounting,” she says. “It’s pretty boring.”

“It’s a lot better than suing someone,” Stiles mutters, and Lord save them, her child knows what suing is. He huffs, and rubs at his eye. “It’s just not fair, Mom.”

“There’s a lot of things in the world that aren’t fair, sweetie,” she says. “Jackson is a bully, and unfortunately bullies aren’t easy to reason with. They have to be stood up to. Sometimes, all that takes is a well-placed punch, but I don’t want to ever hear about you fighting.”

“Not even if I have to,” Stiles asks.

“Why would a kindergartener need to fight,” she asks.

“Well, maybe there’s like ninjas on the playground or something,” Stiles suggests.

“Don’t be a smart mouth,” she warns.

“Sorry,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t entirely look it.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes, you might need to fight. Not right now, you hear me, son? But if someone is trying to hurt you and you can’t run away, you might need to fight back. And that’s all right, so long as you never start it. Only ever go up against someone who has harmed you. Understand?” He nods enthusiastically. “But, with Jackson, what you should do, and if you do this for Scott, that’s fine, because you’re looking out for your best friend, you need to stand up to him. Tell him that making fun of someone who is hurt isn’t cool, doesn’t make him better. It makes him a jerk, and no one wants to be friends with a jerk. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt,” Stiles says.

Ellie smiles and thinks not for the first time that her son is already too smart. A five year old shouldn’t know who that is. “So, today’s lessons,” she asks.

“Don’t let bullies push you around. Tell them to stop. Only fight if there are no other options,” he says.

Ellie pulls Stiles into her lap and kisses the top of his head. “That’s my boy,” she says.

He’s not much younger than she and Chris were when they learned about the supernatural, but Ellie had long since promised herself that no children of hers would ever be brought up in the way she was. They would not be forced to grow up too soon, to be made into warriors. She had thought maybe when they were older she would teach them how to shoot, just for safety’s sake, but she’s married to a cop. There is no question between either of them that Stiles will be well educated in gun safety and handling.

Ellie hasn’t decided if she’ll ever tell Stiles about what’s actually out there. After all, there’s nothing wrong with the ignorance, per say. Ignorance is bliss. He can grow up and be aware of how to take care of himself without knowing about things that go bump in the night. John doesn’t know, and it’s not exactly affecting the way he handles himself.

She’s not sure what she’ll do exactly, but Stiles is only five. She’s got years to make that decision.

``

Kate coming in town for the weekend has Allison absolutely bouncing off the walls. She’s ecstatic to see her aunt, and prattles on about slumber party plans and will Kate take her to go see _The Emperor’s New Groove_ , because even at six years old she’s picked up on how her mother can’t handle seeing it for the ninth time.

Kate does everything Allison wants and more. She brings her to the park, buys her new accessories for her dolls, braids her hair, colors, makes Play-Doh food, builds blanket forts, the works. The little girl is good and passed out before 8:30 each night.

It leaves Chris and Kate plenty of time to gather their things and head out for the hunt.

Friday night goes off without a hitch. Chris and Victoria have already been gathering intelligence on the pack, and they’re convinced that it’s been involved in a few local murders. They put down a beta that night, and due to the too late hour, decide to save the rest for tomorrow.

It’s that second hunt where things get a little messy. They’ve managed to round up the rest of the pack and are in the process of putting them down. Chris is leveling his gun at the Alpha’s head when he hears one of the betas begging Kate to spare him.

Chris has heard it all before. The begging, the snarling, the silence, the insults. There’s only so many ways for them to react to their imminent deaths, and he’s been a part of this long enough that he’s heard and seen them all. He does hate the begging though.

Especially when it comes from a kid. The beta is a teenager, fifteen or sixteen, and he’s pleading with everything he’s got, tears streaming down his cheeks. He says it’s not his fault, that he was bit, and he’s trying to control it, but it’s so hard.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Kate says, sugar sweet, and she pulls the trigger. The Alpha snarls at her, and she laughs, turning to put him out too. She blows at the end of her gun and winks at Chris. “Cool, so we done here?”

Chris shakes off the heavy feeling in his gut and says, “The bodies.”

“Oh, come on,” Kate whines. “They’re animals.”

“Who look like people right now,” Chris says.

Kate rolls her eyes. “Come on, even if someone finds them out here, what problem is that for us? They aren’t going to trace us to this. We’ve got no connections to them. Just leave them for the crows.”

And she spins on her heel to all but skip off into the trees. Chris stares after her for a long moment before he grabs one of the shovels and begins to dig the grave. It gives him time to think. This isn’t the first hunt he’s been on with his sister, not by a long shot, and not even the first since she got a license and could drive out to meet them—their father is still angry about Chris and Victoria’s decision to not include Allison in the life and thus isn’t really speaking to them. He’s always known that Kate is enthusiastic about the job. She enjoys doing it more than anyone else Chris has come across.

It shouldn’t be like that. This isn’t a game. It’s not supposed to be fun. Everything about this is supposed to be difficult. It’s supposed to keep you up at night, wondering and worrying. But the more Chris sees Kate, the more it’s her he’s worrying about, not the job they do.

Kate has always handled this all differently from Chris and Ellie, in part due to that they had each other while going through their training. Kate was alone, just with their father to tell her what to do and how to handle it. Their father, who remains bitter towards his elder daughter to the point of disowning her for trying to have her own life. He’s never forgiven Ellie for that, and it’s affected the way he raised Kate.

With Kate, he demands perfection and blind loyalty to the cause and to him, and Kate has that. She works and sweats and trains, and she believes everything that their father says. And somehow, she’s learned to treat this all as a game. How many can she kill? How fast? In what ways?

And mere minutes ago, she had stared down at sixteen year old kid, someone just around her own age, begging for his life, and she had shot him with a smile. Of course, the boy had to go. He’d been part of the whole mess, blood literally on his hands. They had to do it, but with a smile?

As Chris packs the dirt down on the grave, he just has to hope it’s because Kate is so young, only seventeen. She still has growing to do. She’ll mature and realize that this isn’t fun. She’ll take things more seriously, and learn about the actual gravity of all of this.

Kate is leaning up against the car when he comes out of the woods. She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a dork,” she says, slipping into the driver’s seat.

She’ll grow up. She has to.

``

She’s been putting it off for a long time. It’s part stubbornness, part denial, and part a focus on Stiles. The boy is all over the place, more than an eight year old should be, and while his retention and understanding are at higher levels than any other children in his class—with the possible exception of the Martin girl that he has such a crush on—he can’t focus on things.

Eventually they get him diagnosed with ADHD, and it’s all a mess. Stiles hates the way the medications make him feel, and while his teachers are willing to be a little bit lenient if he doesn’t take a dose, they still need to get him accustomed to the change. Between that, her job, worrying about John when he’s on shift, and taking care of the house, Ellie doesn’t have any energy left.

It seems like it’s just the flu for a while, but she gets sick too often. It’s when she accidentally cuts her finger on a knife and it just won’t stop bleeding that she finally admits to herself that she has to do something.

The diagnosis is leukemia, and that just sucks.

``

Life is basically perfect. Sure, Allison pouts that they move around too much, but it’s nowhere near as frequent as both Chris and Victoria did when they were kids, so they’re considering it a win. The legal side of their business is booming, which allows them to live a very comfortable lifestyle.

Allison is a bit of a golden child. She’s smart—nothing exceptional or anything—always doing well in classes and complimented by her teachers as being polite and well behaved. Although Chris and Victoria stand by their decision to not include Allison in the family business, they do subtly train her. Victoria enrolls Allison in gymnastics and spends afternoons tumbling around in the backyard with her. Chris shows her how to shoot a bow, claiming it to be an old pastime he shared with his own father. It’s not actually a lie.

Allison loves the bow, and she’s very good at it. She’s Robin Hood that year for Halloween, and it takes a lot of smooth talking to keep her from bringing out her real bow when she goes Trick-or-Treating.

``

The doctors telling her that the cancer seems to have gone into remission and she can stop the chemo and go home ranks as the third best thing that has ever happened to her, right under Stiles being born and meeting John.

 She’s responded—finally—to the medications, but she’s not exactly up for cartwheeling down the halls, so she almost entirely sleeps through John getting called into work on an off day. She barely hears him telling her that this is likely to be a long day and that he’ll phone Melissa McCall to pick up Stiles after school. She feels the ghost of the kiss he presses to her forehead, and she’s back asleep by the time the cruiser pulls out of the driveway.

It is indeed a long day for her husband, who manages a few minutes to call in around 4:00 to let them know that he’s not going to be coming home tonight. Stiles pouts, because Ellie’s only been home from the hospital for a few days, and he’s desperate for the three of them to be together in a place that doesn’t overwhelmingly smell like antiseptics. But Ellie promises him that John will come home soon, and the three of them will make a monstrous mess in the kitchen to celebrate. Stiles is placated, and they spend the night cuddled on the couch with a pizza each—she forces herself to eat most of it when Stiles looks at her with those too big eyes—and old _I Love Lucy_ reruns.

The next morning, after Melissa has come to pick up Stiles for school, Ellie calls the dispatch to ask for her husband’s whereabouts. Helen gives Ellie all the details that John hadn’t had time to share. It was a house fire, the Hale place on the edge of the reserve, and almost all of the family had been trapped inside, save for two of the children—safe at school when the house had lit up—and their uncle, who is in intensive care for what will probably be fatal burns.

Helen tells her that John should be on his way back to the office within the next hour to file paperwork, and she also whispers that the children are still there as well.

Ellie hangs up and lugs herself out of bed and digs some fresh clothes out of the closet. They’re a bit wrinkled—Stiles had done them, but he doesn’t have the best handle on ironing yet—but that’s no matter. She hurries into the kitchen and speeds her way through making a breakfast casserole. It’s still piping hot when she pulls into the station parking lot.

She walks in and almost plows into John in the hallway. He hurries to steady the food, hissing and yanking his hands back. “We really need to stop meeting like this,” Ellie says fondly.

“Damn, that’s hot,” John says, sticking his fingers in his mouth. His brow furrows. “And what are you doing here? Did you drive? The doctor said—“

“Blah, blah, blah,” Ellie yammers. “You’ve been working for twenty-four hours, so I can safely assume you haven’t eaten.” John doesn’t even both trying to deny it. “And Helen said the Hale kids were still here.”

“Yeah,” John says, voice dropping and looking just so tired. “Kept them here overnight. They’re—it’s bad, Ellie.”

“Kept them here,” Ellie asks. “Oh, honey, please tell me the department’s going to set them up with a hotel room or they can have our guest room or something.”

“Hotel room is getting set up this afternoon,” John assures her. He runs a hand through his hair and then inclines his head down the hall, knowing what she’s here for. “You’re an angel, sweetheart,” he says, kissing her forehead.

The Hale kids—so stupidly and obviously siblings with their matching features, everything similar down to the way their brows and mouths twist—are crowded together on a cot set up in one of the spare offices. The elder sister—Laura—is running soothing hands over her brother’s back as he clings to her, face buried in her shoulder.

Ellie’s heart absolutely breaks for these kids.

They aren’t very talkative when she introduces herself and offers up the casserole. She sees the visible effort Laura puts up to thank her and nudge her brother to get a piece for himself. He mostly just pushes it around on his plate until his sister’s elbow in his side gets to be too much.

“I know saying I’m sorry for your loss doesn’t mean anything,” Ellie says.

“No, it’s—it’s kind of you,” Laura says, and Derek just looks up at Ellie with wet eyes that are so empty.

“I lost my family too,” she says. “Not like this, but I understand about as well as someone can. It’s rough.”

Laura hesitates for a second before asking, “Does it ever get better?” Two large tears drop down her cheeks, and Derek shifts closer to her.

Ellie sighs. “In a way,” she answers. “You’ll always miss them, but the pain gets easier to handle, and eventually you’ll be able to remember the good times and not just this one terrible moment. You just need time.”

“I just—I feel like we—or I should have been there,” Laura says. “Maybe I could have done something, helped them or—“ She can’t finish the sentence, and Ellie reaches out to run a soothing hand over her shoulders.

“No, honey,” Ellie says. “You can’t think like that. If you and your brother had been there, you’d have been hurt too. This is not your fault. This isn’t either of yours fault.”

Derek goes tense, completely frozen for all of a few seconds before his face just crumbles, and he folds in on himself, long legs curled up to his chest and arms wrapping over his head. Laura goes pale and turns to drape over him, her own tears falling freely again. She looks up at Ellie and says, “I’m sorry. Could we—can—“

“Of course,” Ellie says, and she hurries to scribble down her number. “If either of you need anything, food, a place to do laundry, or someone to rant at, you can call us, and my husband and I will do what we can.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Stilinski,” Laura says, accepting the paper and then immediately turning to whisper into her brother’s ear.

Ellie leaves them to their grief and heads to her husband’s office.

John is given the afternoon and the night off, but he’s back out at the Hale property the next morning. Ellie drives out to meet him with lunch. She’s technically not supposed to be there, but pretty much the entire department has learned that they aren’t going to keep her out if she wants in, so they just wave her over to where John is standing. He first gives her a look of disapproval for driving out, and then he snatches the bag with a greedy gleam in his eyes.

“What,” he asks, “no super-size?” Ellie just pats his stomach in response. “Oh, that’s cold,” he says indignantly as a few other officers snicker. John takes out the burger and shoves a too large bite into his mouth.

For a brief moment, Ellie considers how strange normal people must think that is, eating at a crime scene or around such carnage. The house behind them—once big and grand and beautiful—is in still smoking ruins that smell of death. But even though they can recognize this horror and even be affected by it, she sadly admits to herself that you just get used to it and have to learn to not be as affected by it.

“Any clues what started it yet,” she asks.

“Nothing definite,” John answers.

“But,” Ellie prompts, and he offers a mild glare to which she just grins. He knows better than to try to keep her from nosing around in police business. She’s curious, and she knows when he’s thinking about hiding something.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “Just a feeling.”

“Go bloodhound on it,” she encourages. John’s intuitions are usually pretty spot on. He nods and pops a handful of fries in his mouth. Ellie winces. Stiles is never going to learn good table manners.

One of the other deputies comes over, and as they’re discussing the lingering smell of gasoline, Ellie wanders around the perimeter of the house. It’s blackened and creaking and just terribly sad. It’s horrible to think that Laura and Derek have been here and seen this.

She sees a flash of purple, and it’s more than enough to catch her attention. Even in the springtime flowers don’t really bloom in these woods, and any plants around the house mostly seem to have been caught up in the fire. Ellie crouches down and pulls the petal up from the blackened earth. She recognizes it in an instant.

Wolfsbane. Specifically Northern Blue Monkshood. It’s not native to this part of the country.

It’s a red flag that no one else on the force is going to see, and one she can’t exactly explain. A few more minutes of subtle digging gives her evidence of more plants and even bits of mountain ash. It’s all along the exits of the house.

This wasn’t an accidental fire. This was a hunt. The Hales were werewolves.

Ellie feels lightheaded for a moment as all these implications sink in. She’s been living in a town with a large family of werewolves—who have been vocal and prevalent in the community—and never even noticed. Hunters came through and decimated them, leaving only two alive and a third in critical condition.

There were children in that house. Young children. There was a baby, who Ellie is sure wasn’t even a year old yet.

She feels sick. She’s out of practice, but Ellie doesn’t miss the signs. If the Hales had done anything that would warrant a hunter’s attention, she would have picked up on it. But they hadn’t. The Hales might have been werewolves, but they were just living their lives peacefully. They hadn’t deserved targeting. And even if they had, dear God, the children?

Ellie keeps her eyes peeled, but there’s no further sign of any activity that would lead her to believe the hunters are still in town. The fire is considered suspicious, but there’s no direct evidence that can connect anyone to it. Peter Hale survives his injuries, but he’s placed into a long term care ward, and the doctors have little to no hope that he’s going to make any real sort of recovery. Laura and Derek Hale leave town in a hurry after they receive that news, barely remembering to leave behind any contact information with the sheriff’s department in the event of a break in the case.

``

They’re currently living in Southern Illinois, and one afternoon Kate rolls into town all bright smiles and open arms. Allison, as usual, is ecstatic to see her, and Chris is pleased but a bit confused. She hadn’t even called ahead.

“Surprises spice up life, big brother,” she chirps, patting his cheek as she heads for the refrigerator.

“Am I not allowed to wonder why you’ve showed up here with no warning,” Chris asks with a grin. “You usually call ahead to let Allison know so that we get to deal with her riled up for a few days.”

“Missed opportunities,” Kate sighs, popping into a beer. “But no, I’m coming back from the West Coast. Long drive, so what if I made it a couple hours longer coming up?”

“Oh, stop with the pouting. Of course we’re glad to have you. What job was it,” he asks. “We don’t have anything to be concerned with out that way, at least not anything we’ve been informed of.”

He offers Kate a stern look, and she rolls her eyes. “Oh, please, it was a little job. Dad didn’t think we needed to bother you two with getting permission to take care of it. And really, I hope you aren’t that anal about it.”

“You keep to the Code,” Chris asks.

Kate pouts again. “Oh, come on, Chris, would I go after something that didn’t deserve it? It’s me.”

Chris worries about Kate sometimes, her enthusiasm for the messier parts of the job, her recklessness and ruthlessness and blind devotion to their father’s word rather than her own conscience. But at the end of the day, of course, it’s Kate, his sister. She was raised with the same Code as he was.

But a few months later he hears about a pack they off and on monitor in Northern California. All but two of the pack were burned alive in their family home, and they blame the Argents for it. Victoria is immediately indignant about the whole thing, as she most certainly did not authorize a hunt of that size, but Chris remembers Kate mentioning a West Coast job, and he wonders.

Kate denies it when he asks, and Chris almost immediately has his father riding his ass, demanding to know why he would ever consider that Kate of all people would ever endanger the family’s reputation or hunt something that wasn’t dangerous or a threat.

“She’s trigger happy, no denying that,” Victoria says. “But this? You don’t really think she did it?”

“I absolutely don’t want to,” Chris answers heavily. “She’s my sister. I have to believe that she wouldn’t. But the new Hale Alpha has called us out by name.”

“With no evidence,” Victoria reminds him.

“Then why name us?”

Victoria sighs. “You know I don’t have any love for those creatures,” she says. “We’ve had eyes on the Hales, and there’s been no indication that they ever spilled human blood. Christ, they were a large enough pack that they even had humans amongst them. But what happened, it was—regrettable, maybe?”

“Considering the humans and children in the house, yeah,” Chris says, rubbing his eyes. Sometimes he really just hates everything about all of this.

“Anyone, monster or human, after something like that, they’d be looking for someone to blame,” Victoria says. “They picked us.”

“So, what do we do about it,” Chris asks.

“We stand our ground,” she says. “We had nothing to do with this, and if they make any attempts at ill-conceived revenge, we put them down. In the meantime, we keep a closer eye on them. Only two of them, and the Alpha still new and young, they’re a potential danger.”

Chris thinks it’s something of a tragedy. The two Hales are just children, both still in high school. They’ve lost everything but each other. But Chris can’t afford to think like that. No hunter can, not if they want to get the job done and stay alive. Sympathy for the enemy leads to hesitation, and hesitation is a surefire way to get killed. Chris has no plans to fall to any of these monsters.

``

Ellie is careful to get regular checkups, but when the cancer comes back, it comes with a vengeance. This time it’s going to happen. She’s dying. The doctors don’t give her very long, only a few months, which her stubborn body stretches into almost six. It’s miserable the entire time, and in no small part because of how it’s affecting her son and husband. It breaks her heart anew every day to see John becoming more desperate and Stiles more withdrawn. She’s in a constant battle of wishing it would just happen to spare them this lingering torment and fighting for her every breath because what if she holds out long enough and manages to beat it back again. If she does that, she’ll get to see her son learn to drive and get his first girlfriend—maybe finally that Martin girl he gushes over—and go to college and start a family. Stiles is meant for amazing things, and she wants so desperately to stand by John’s side and watch them happen.

But she doesn’t get that chance. She’s not scared of dying. She had to come to terms with death a long time ago, but she regrets all the things she’s going to miss. She thinks of her family a lot in the last days, the one she left behind all those years ago. She wonders how little Kate grew up, what sort of woman she’s become. She wonders about her parents, if they’ve retired or are still fighting strong—probably the latter. She wonders about Chris, if he too went on to have a family that he loves as hopelessly as Ellie loves hers. She wonders if they could have ever been reunited and reconciled everything that happened, if Stiles could have gotten to know his uncle and any possible cousins. She thinks Stiles would have liked to have cousins.

``

It’s a Tuesday that Chris wakes up one morning feeling off. There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that refuses to go away. It’s not sickness or even the feeling like he’s forgotten something important or that someone’s watching him.

It’s a sensation that the only thing he can think of that remotely resembles it is the feeling he had the first few weeks after Ellie ran away, when he was trying to adjust to the idea of her not being right there. It’s mindboggling, and he never really discovers any cause for it.

It’s not for another four years that he moves to Beacon Hills and learns that his sister is dead, leaving him to contend with a nephew that mostly hates him and has set his allegiances with the wolves. Stiles and Allison, for whatever family ties they have, are Hales now. It’s strange for Chris to realize. He’s the last of his family, the last Argent, the end of a line. 


End file.
